Strafe (Action)

A character whose firearm still has 9 or more shots remaining may spread a stream of ammunition across several targets. The character chooses a number of adjacent 5-ft. squares up to 1/3 the ammunition remaining in his weapon (rounded down, maximum 10 squares). He may not skip any squares across the target area, nor may he target any square more than once or target any square directly behind another square already being strafed.

The character makes 1 attack check. with which all recoil penalties are doubled. This one result is compared to the Defense of each opponent standing in a target square, from one end of the adjacent square chain to the other. Each target opponent — or target square, if the weapon attacks squares and not occupants — gains a cumulative +2 bonus to Defense (i.e. the first target gains a +2 bonus to Defense, the second target gains a +4 bonus to Defense, the third target gains a +6 bonus to Defense, and so on). Each target hit suffers the attack’s standard damage.

With a critical hit, the damage is only applied to the wound points of one opponent of the character’s choice (if any additional opponents are hit, damage is applied to each as a standard hit).

Special Note: When the character uses a Strafe action to target more than 1 square occupied by the same opponent, each occupied square is handled as a separate target. The standard bonus to Defense applies, and damage is inflicted for each successful hit.